May 1, 2009

Recording Artist Tami Chin Leaving SRC/ Universal Music Label

Tami Chynn is cutting ties with her label SRC/ Universal leaving behind pop dreams and two albums unreleased in major markets.

She'll quit pop and return to dancehall music, "the stuff that got her signed to a major in the first place", she told the Jamaica Observer Splash Magazine.

Universal signed Chynn four years ago but effectively shelved her two albums releasing the first in Japan only. "I have been fighting to get this release for months," she added. "I am praying it comes through."

Chynn expects to get a release but doesn't expect to get the right to buy back her albums. "It's like losing my babies," she told Splash. "So I will have to walk scotch free."

Chynn was poised to precede Lady GaGa (Stefani Germanotta), a Universal labelmate, who in 2007 co-wrote three songs for Chynn's album alongside superstar Akon (Aliaune Thiam) including Silly Heartbreakers, Killa Love Song and Eyes on Me.

"Whether it should have been me over GaGa and all that foolishness. I don't think so, I am Tami Chynn and will always be the first Tami Chynn," she added that GaGa, who is on Interscope/ Universal, has a larger reach than her SRC/Universal label.

"A lot of people are wondering what happen to Tami Chynn and why she can't buss, but the truth is when you are working with a label that is not a well-oiled machine it is very hard to move because you need their help, money and support."

Chynn's label released her single Frozen last year, she says the single received "no" promotion. Even so the song got to number three on the Hot Dance Club Play charts, a sublisting of Billboard's. To date the album awaits release. In the interim, GaGa released her debut gold- selling album which peaked at number one on Billboards Hot 100.

"It took them nine months to release the video for Frozen and my label was pussyfooting around," she said. "People would never know the struggle that I went through in the last four years being signed to a major."

"What has happened now is that me and my label cannot see eye to eye, so I basically asked for a release so now I am trying to get back to the music that I love that got me signed in the first place," she said.

Chynn claimed that her Chinese-black ethnicity hurt her in an industry where musical genres tend to be race defined. "My label made it very clear to me that they were not sure what to do with me because I was a seemingly white girl who was not white but also Chinese and Black," she said. "An (atypical) Jamaican girl is exactly what made them love me and exactly what made them not know what to do with me. That is why the first album was released in Japan only," she explained.